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Vol. 45 No. 1— Jan/Feb 2025

FEATURE

In his presentation, Edson described the new museum, which is located in Mumbai, India’s largest city (22 million people) and a financial hub, as being “dedicated to inspiring and empowering young people to solve the world’s most pressing problems.” It’s a 10-story building in an old mill district that is currently undergoing gentrification. Upon entering the building, visitors are in a common area, with a multipurpose auditorium. It sets the tone of the museum, as part of the overall design is to surprise the senses. Other floors of the museum house a cafe area for food and drink, where visitors are encouraged to enjoy not only eating but also interacting and conversing with each other. There’s an exhibit space, a maker space, a play lab, a discovery lab, a grow lab, and, permeating throughout MuSo, there are areas for visitors to explore the world around them. “The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), tone, and architecture create a framing ‘ask’ and context,” explained Edson.

LIBRARY OF SOLUTIONS

Edson described the Library of Solutions as a quiet, personal space, often filled with laughter and joy. It also has phenomenal views of the city through floor-to-ceiling windows. The library is increasingly co-curated by young people. Books are grouped by topics chosen to be meaningful to children, such as “Books with a hole” and “Little People, Big Dreams”—categories you’re not likely to see in your local public library’s children’s room. Although the library is designed as a space for children, adults often marvel at it and want to spend time there.

Edson said that when adult staff interviewed children, they found a great curiosity about the world that the kids felt was not being met by the collections in their school or community libraries. The kids wanted to help adults understand “the learning journey of youth.” He also told the story of a young boy who, during the pandemic, asked residents of his apartment building to donate books. He then set up a library in the lobby of his building.

The use of the word “solutions” in the name of the museum and of the library is purposeful. Edson believes that everyone is a solver. The design thinking utilized in creating MuSo focuses on “doing,” something that is evident throughout the structure. Particularly relevant is finding solutions to the real-world problem of the climate emergency. When you consider that Mumbai could be underwater by 2070, the need for solutions is evident.

Edson concluded his talk about the “boldly child-led, rooted in reality, and radically inclusive” museum and library by saying, “We’re at a fraught moment.” Many of MuSo’s visitors share a sense of worry or grief about the future, coupled with a desire to build bridges to the future and to take action to find a better path. We need to increase our understanding of what constitutes good social media, particularly as it affects young people. We need a new approach to digitality. We live in an age of anxiety, with rapid technological changes threatening to overwhelm us.

Perhaps more importantly, we live in a world where none of us really knows what the future will be like in the next few years, even though we’re teaching children about it. In today’s world, knowing is not enough—doing is what is central to being an educated person. Empathy is key. “But Empathy alone is not enough,” said Edson. “Empathy and action need to be taught and practiced together. Young people,” he said, “can be consequential actors in societal problem-solving—and they have a fundamental human right to do so.”

HOW HE GOT TO MuSo

Edson has had a long and distinguished career in libraries and museums. His entry into this “GLAMorous” career began with a job cleaning Plexiglas display cases at the Smithsonian Institution, where he was paid by the case. He moved on to significant positions at the Smithsonian, Europeana, and the United Nations (UN), plus he had stints advising with other organizations involved in cultural heritage. Innovation and awareness of changing technologies have been common themes throughout his career.

As he explained to me in an interview after the conference, Edson has a firm belief in the value of cultural institutions, but he believes that the institutions need to change more quickly in response to rapid changes in society. Libraries and museums have a lot in common, and the notion of combining them is not as far-fetched as some might think. Putting his belief into practice is why MuSo includes a Library of Solutions.

These types of memory institutions, however, were built around certain ideas about who had responsibility and what it meant to be a learned person. A hundred years ago, he said, you went to museums to look back at the past and to learn about how that affected your current role in the culture. But you were listening to the authoritative voices of a small group of chosen experts. You were not listening to the voices of thousands of other people. In many ways, cultural institutions of the past were restricted in their curation efforts.

WHAT IS AN EDUCATED CITIZEN?

In his view, at this particular moment in the information landscape, what it means to be an educated, discerning citizen has really changed. This forces institutions out of their comfort zones and into the public sphere more than ever before. He pointed to the Museum for the United Nations (museumfortheunitednations.com) as an example. Its goal is to catalyze action around the UN’s SDGs, not from whiteboards, white papers, and publications, but with the hands-on know-how of people in local communities. Although its headquarters is technically in Denmark, the museum itself is online and borderless. The intent is to “spark global empathy, action, and change through the power of popular culture and dialogue.” This is a recurring theme you hear when talking with Edson.

Before the technology permitted museums to be 100% virtual, Edson confronted the notion of transforming physical collections into ones that could be more widely viewed without the necessity of traveling to a specific location. This was at the Smithsonian where, in 2008, he became its director of web and new media strategy. By taking advantage of the burgeoning internet and convincing the skeptics accustomed to a longer time frame for change, Edson and his colleagues created the Smithsonian’s first mobile tour, first blog, and first online collection. For an exhibit of photographs of India by Iranian photographer Antoin Sevruguin in 2000, Edson’s team invited the public to submit any photographs they had taken in India—an early crowdsourcing experiment!

EUROPEANA

Edson became involved in the European Initiative (europeana.eu/en) in 2010 through work he was doing on open content and “the cultural commons” at the Smithsonian. Europeana began as a virtual museum/library/collection rather than as a legacy institution. Its mission, as articulated on its webpage, is: “Europeana empowers the cultural heritage sector in its digital transformation. We develop expertise, tools and policies to embrace digital change and encourage partnerships that foster innovation.” Funded by the European Union, Europeana believes that the digitization of cultural heritage items held by galleries, libraries, archives, and museums “empowers people and benefits society as a whole.” The cultural heritage on display comes from more than 2,000 European institutions.

Edson said that Europeana “practically set the servers on fire” when it first launched in 2008. It was the first moment that people saw some of Europe’s diverse cultural collections all in the same place. In terms of copyright, he touched on the differences between the U.S. and European view and worries that copyright and the open content movement are losing ground in the battle to ensure access to the world’s collective history and culture. In his view, knowledge should be a fundamental freedom, both as a human right and to encourage innovation.

Culture, in its broadest definition, is a shared good in society. Cultural heritage belongs to humanity and is temporarily managed by stewards. He’s presently serving as chair of the Europeana Foundation advisory board and as such remains involved.

Edson firmly believes in the vision of a shared cultural heritage, but recognizes that there are elements of a classic disruptive innovation in the story of Europeana and other online collections. Digitizing and cataloging is easier now than it was in 2008, but the hard question still remains: how to create large-scale civic value out of these digitized collections. “That requires a different set of skills, a different kind of network, a different kind of diplomacy, and a different mindset than merely collecting and sharing,” said Edson.

CLIMATE CRISIS

Climate change and environmental issues loom large in Edson’s work. “Life has changed,” he commented. “Problems like sustainability and climate span government and diplomatic boundaries. For museums and libraries, do you create new kinds of institutions to revitalize and execute the mission of the old ones?” He believes that the network and the ethos of librarianship are incredibly powerful and exciting. However, Edson finds many library professionals shrink away from activism. He recalled a session at IFLA’s 2023 Congress on disinformation. Every librarian in the room responded in the affirmative when asked if they thought disinformation was an urgent crisis. Then Edson asked how many of their libraries were taking concrete action. Not a single hand went up. This is discouraging and disconcerting. “We need to build a bridge from awareness to action and normalize that responsibility within the library sector and in society at large,” he concluded.

Particularly when it comes to climate change, Edson agrees with Bill McKibben, economist and environmentalist, in his view that winning slowly is the same as losing. “What is the purpose of this vast enlightened infrastructure of libraries and museums if we’re not using it to help make good decisions about complicated ideas?” Edson asked. Simply providing information about the environment and the dangers of a changing climate is not sufficient to motivate action. Engaging people through activities rather than passive repositories encourages critical thinking, civic literacy, and actionable solutions. That is the role cultural heritage institutions should assume.

Throughout his career, Edson has been struck by the realization that the people who know the most about digital technology don’t work for you, which is a fantastic rationale for encouraging organizations to be open and accessible. In that way, cultural heritage institutions can engage with a broader range of experts and audiences. For him, empathy and action are two sides of the same coin. Both are needed to solve the climate crisis and reach the SDGs by the target date of 2030.

Edson sees 2030 as an important date and wants to leverage his reputation, skill, and reach—“Humble though they may be,” he adds­­—to accomplish something consequential for the SDGs in this decade. “If I were a shoemaker I would be doing this in the shoe-making industry, but I’m a cultural worker, so I’m doing it in museums, libraries, and cultural institutions,” said Edson. He sees a change toward these institutions taking on the role of sidekick and supporter. Instead of showing off great collections and looking inward, museums and libraries should concentrate on helping people be the best versions of themselves. “Our institutions can create bridges to the future, to take action, and to support young people and their communities who are working to put us on a better path.” The crucial piece is to be optimistic and have hope. And that is what MuSo and the Library of Solutions are about.

Marydee Ojala (marydee@xmission.com) is editor of Online Searcher.

Michael Peter Edson (usingdata@gmail.com) is a regular speaker at Information Today, Inc. conferences.